


monster lead me home

by robpatFF



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, M/M, civil war spoilers in case you didn't get that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 02:19:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6934120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robpatFF/pseuds/robpatFF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They make it to a safehouse. </p><p>Sam thinks, <i>hopes</i> it’s a safehouse. Steve bullies him through the front door, so all Sam can catch in a bid to take in as much of the landscape and escape routes as possible (because fuck if Sam is letting himself get caught again. His wrists are still red and tender, and there’s a bruise that takes up the expanse of his left side that Steve will never, ever know about) is winding roads, lush, green grass and tulips of all things growing at the end of long, never-ending stalks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	monster lead me home

**Author's Note:**

> Post-CACW. Spoilers for the movie. Beta'd by yours truly. Title by Sara Hartman.
> 
> Way I figure it, I'm just gonna have to be ride or die for Steve/Sam until the rest of the world gets in formation. 
> 
> I don't own Marvel, btw.

They make it to a safehouse. 

Sam thinks, _hopes_ it’s a safehouse. Steve bullies him through the front door, so all Sam can catch in a bid to take in as much of the landscape and escape routes as possible (because fuck if Sam is letting himself get caught again. His wrists are still red and tender, and there’s a bruise that takes up the expanse of his left side that Steve will never, ever know about) is winding roads, lush, green grass and tulips of all things growing at the end of long, never-ending stalks.

Steve is still carrying the weight of a thousand martyr complexes on his shoulders, back stiff and tense like a cat ready to bolt. Sam had watched his face cycle through too many emotions since they left the prison and Wakanda, eyes frosted over like the glass tomb that enclosed around Bucky, T’Challa’s promises of protection like a too-soon balm over a bleeding, open wound. 

Sam braces himself against a wood-paneled wall that leads to some kind of sitting room. Everything hurts, his feet, his head, his bones, but damned if he lets himself sleep around a century old super soldier who looks like he’s ready to tear this place to shreds at the slightest push. It’s the therapist in him, god help him.

“Hey,” Sam says quietly. “What’s the play here, big fella?”

Steve lets out a soft huff, the ghost of a laugh, and turns to look out one of the huge bay windows that’s letting in long, wide stripes of moonlight. He looks the kind of exhausted that Sam hopes he’s hiding in himself right now. Steve shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs.

“Figured you earned yourself a good bit of rest.” He won’t look at Sam, probably isn’t really looking at much of anything out that damn window. “Nobody will find you here, Sam, I promise.”

Sam lets out a cracked-open, bitter laugh before he can help himself. His left side is throbbing and inflamed, he’s barely holding himself upright, and America’s Star Spangled Man With a Plan is going to get murdered here tonight. Sam can promise him _that_. “No one’ll find me, huh?” Sam repeats. He hears the banked fury in his voice, can feel it heating up his chest and boiling in his blood, the clench of his fists. Steve tenses like he can hear it, too, and fucking good. _Hear me, motherfucker_ , Sam thinks. 

“And what about you?” Sam asks. “Good ol’ Steve Rogers, only happy if he’s got a mission to die for, somebody to save in his last big moment of heroics, right?” Steve jerks, like Sam reached out to shake him. “And you’ve already done that for me. Fulfilled that debt, right?”

Steve spins around, half-shocked, half-furious. “Sam,” he urges. “You know--”

“I know I spent two goddamn years by your side looking for _your_ friend, _your_ Bucky,” Sam cuts out. He’s not being fair, he’s not--Jesus, but everything hurts, and Steve is so self-righteous sometimes it makes Sam want to scream. “And you’re damned right I earned myself some rest. But if you think you can just leave me here in some--quite beautiful prison, really beautiful, nice fucking job, by the way. But it’s a prison, Steve, regardless.” Sam looks Steve square in the eye, sees the blue darken with Steve’s own temper, his mouth white with holding his words back. “You can’t just pick and choose when I get to be your partner, and when I get to be reduced to some incompetent sidekick that has to stay home.”

“ _Sam_ ,” Steve says. “God--just, can I talk now?”

“No,” Sam bites out. He pushes himself off the wall with a cut-off curse. He can feel himself shaking, adrenaline and injury crashing down on him all at once. He sees Steve start to reach out for him, sees his fingers curl with indecision at the last moment, as if he doesn’t know if Sam would even let him. 

Sam doesn’t know either. 

“You can talk tomorrow morning,” Sam grits out, shuffling his way down a long, dimly-lit hallway. It even smells like flowers in here, and if it wasn’t giving him such a headache, Sam would think that was real nice. “If you’re still here, that is. If you’re not, well, shut the whole fuck up, man.”

He absolutely does not look back at Steve as he lets himself into an impressive bedroom. The bed will probably be too soft, but right now, it looks like a dream. He hears Steve let out a long, drawn out curse, can practically hear the grinding of his teeth from all the way down the hall. Sam does not slam the door on that sound, because Sam is not childish.

He is a goddamn adult, a superhero at that. He firmly closes it, is all. Loudly.

\-----

The smell of eggs and burnt bacon is what wakes Sam up. 

He forgets what he’s been through and moves too fast, pain flaring up like fireworks. He groans into his pillow, squeezing his eyes shut as the worst of it passes. He’s used to moving through injuries, fighting the next bad guy and spinning under the weight of his wings, too high in the sky to focus on what hurts and what doesn’t.

Now though, he’s got time to focus on it, and it fucking sucks. Sam forces himself up, arms shaking slightly under the strain. With his feet planted firmly on the ground, room spinning only a little, Sam takes in the room through new eyes and the bright, yellow sunshine that comes in through the blinds. There’s an en suite, and when Sam finally makes it in, he sees it’s got a full jacuzzi tub, with the massaging jets. 

It’s enough to make a grown man cry.

He peels himself out of his clothes, letting the fragrant bubble-bath take over his senses. In the harsh, fluorescent light, his body looks worse than he remembers. His ribs are most surely cracked, there’s a bruise circling his left eye, a world’s worth of cuts and scrapes that sting and bite every time he takes a breath in or out. 

He’s still exhausted, bone deep like even a year’s worth of sleep couldn’t fill him up. 

He sinks, but mostly falls, into the water once it’s done, steam clinging to his skin like a sticky film. His lets his head tilt back against the edge of the tub, the hot water numbing his pain until finally he can think past it for a second.

He lets out a deep, trembling breath as he thinks about how he got here. Thinks about the way Tony had flinched at the prison when Sam had brought up Rhodes, how heavy his body had looked as it was falling like dead weight out of the sky. The way Sam had _pushed_ to make it to Rhodes in time, and how much failure tastes like ash now in the back of his throat. 

Thinks about Wanda--fuck, she’s just a fucking kid, and the way she had stared at them as they undid all the clasps and buckles and chains that held her tight together, imprisoned her within her own body--nobody that young should have eyes like that. 

Steve wouldn’t tell him where he sent the others. His eyes had gone hard and fierce when Sam had tried to ask on the plane back from Wakanda. “The less you know, the less they can use you for leverage later,” Steve had said. “They can’t take you away from--they can’t take you if you don’t know the whole plan, Sam.” _From me_ , they both knew he was going to say. And even then Sam had fought him on it, on that bullshit martyr complex that was going to get them killed one day. 

“Aren’t you the one that said soldiers can’t fight a war without all the information?” Sam had asked him, “Or did I just make that shit up in my head?”

“They’ll have to go through me if they want to start a war with you,” Steve had promised, feral, his teeth bared in a poor imitation of a smile. “With any of you.”

Sam takes another deep breath, the steam filling up his lungs, his chest. He pushes his knees up and presses his face to them, tries to cling to some semblance of balance to keep himself from falling over the edge.

He’s fucking tired. 

He’s still curled up like that, back heaving, trembling, shaking, silent sobs wracking their way up his spine when the sound of Steve knocking on the bedroom door breaks through. 

“Sam?” Steve calls. “There’s, uh, there’s breakfast,” he says, hesitant like he can see straight through the door and knows Sam’s on the verge of falling apart. “If you eat that sort of thing.”

Sam swallows hard, throat scratching like he’s back in the desert. “I’ll be out in a minute,” he calls back, and swears he’ll kill Steve if he mentions the crack in the middle of Sam’s voice.

There’s a pause, like Steve’s thinking of doing just that. “Cool,” he says instead. “That’s good, I mean. That you’ll be out in a minute.”

Jesus, Sam thinks. This is the guy he’s committed his life to. He’s fucked.

\-----

Steve actually stands up from the table when Sam walks into the kitchen. There’s a bouquet of tulips at the center of the table, a burst of color so welcoming that for a moment, it makes Sam forget everything.

“You’re here,” Steve says, and he pulls out the second chair when Sam raises an eyebrow at him. Sam only winces slightly as he sits down and pulls at his ribs.

Steve graciously pretend not to see it. Instead he says, “My ribs hurt like hell last night. I know you’re glad you sidestepped that Queens kid Tony brought in when he swung at yours on the tarmac.” He sips his orange juice, which looks freshly squeezed and annoying as hell. “You got real lucky with that, Sam.”

Sam can see how this is supposed to go. They’ve done it before, him and Steve. When Bucky was on the run, Steve would shut down, shut him out, want to keep all his hurt and anger inside to boil and simmer and rage. And Sam would make them breakfast, eggs and bacon mostly, the occasional French toast when they had time to indulge. And back then, Sam had known what he was supposed to do. Make a crack about the super-soldier serum making Steve’s face stick in that godawful frown. Ask if back in the day Steve had to boil scrambled eggs too, just to make sure. 

It had been Sam’s cross to bear, keeping Steve Rogers grounded and sane while they tracked his assassin, brainwashed Bucky around the world. It had been a cross he had taken willingly, would take again in a heartbeat, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now. Can’t just fall back into banter with this cracked alliance between them, leaving bodies as they go along.

And plus, Sam’s a good guy, sure, but he’s never been a _saint_.

“What do you want, Steve?” Sam asks instead. He meets Steve’s eyes, because Sam Wilson ain’t ever backed down from a challenge, not even when it’s coming from Captain America, still half-dressed in his goddamn fight suit. 

Steve looks back at him. For a moment, Sam remembers Steve’s bewildered voice telling him about Zemo. How Zemo had been taken aback by how Captain America had green hidden in his eyes, behind that apple pie, baseball blue. Sam gets it, kind of. It’s almost annoying to know that behind all the manufactured muscles and patriotism, there’s just a kid from Brooklyn in there, mouthy and spoiling to get his ass kicked. 

Steve clenches his jaw, eyes narrowing before his face settles back into something neutral. “Right now, I just wanna wrap your ribs, maybe take a look at those wrists you been trying to hide from me.” He shrugs. “Can I just want that for right now, Sam?”

Sam opens his mouth to--he doesn’t even know, before Steve cuts him off. “But that can wait ‘til after you eat, okay? I know you gotta be hungry. They feed you in there?”

In there, he says, like the Raft is just another motel they had to hole up in while they waited for Steve to come back to them. Sam does laugh at that, because fuck if he feels like crying again. 

“Yeah, Steve,” he says. “They fed us. Sirloin and mac and cheese and all the fixings. Stark didn’t tell you?”

Steve flinches at the mention of Stark, and Sam’s only got bits and pieces of what went down, but he knows Bucky wasn’t missing his metal arm, and Steve hadn’t looked quite so off-balance when Sam had sent Tony to help them. 

“Nah,” Steve says. “He must have forgot.” He nudges Sam with his foot. “Eat, please.”

“Are you gonna stay?” Sam asks. The eggs are bland, like he hasn’t been teaching Steve about seasoning for two years now. The bacon is crispy though, just how Sam likes it. “Or is this a goodbye meal? Gotta say, I would have preferred lobster.”

Steve huffs. “It’s a ‘stop being mad at me and let me take care of you, for once’ meal.” He nudges Sam again. “Can’t a guy apologize for being an idiot with flowers and a nice breakfast without the third degree?”

“Apologize,” Sam says wonderingly. “All this for little old me, your lowly sidekick you were ready to leave behind last night.”

“Jesus, Sam,” Steve sighs. “I wouldn’t leave you behind. I _couldn’t_ , don’t you know that by now?”

Steve’s fists spasm, a burst of restrained energy so strong that it shakes the table for a moment. Sam blinks down at his still wobbling plate. Steve flexes his fingers, as if he’d just gotten a Charlie horse, not had to stop himself from busting down a table. 

“Let me take care of you,” he says again. “Just for a little bit. Then I can show you around the place, and you can yell at me until your voice goes. Okay?”

“Okay,” Sam says finally. As long as he gets to yell.

\-----

The thing that surprised Sam about Steve (and maybe it wasn’t truly surprise, just an observation that added to the long list of Reasons Sam Wilson Was Completely Fucked About Steve Rogers), was that he had the most gentle hands in the goddamn universe.

Sam sits on the closed lid of the toilet in his bathroom that really has no business being this big. Steve’s hulking frame, bulging muscles and all, fit easily in here, tucked in front of Sam. Sam tries not to shiver under Steve’s hands, the cold drag of ice that runs up and down his side, swallowing up the heat of the inflammation. 

“Better?” Steve asks, voice low and rasping in the echo of the bathroom. 

Sam swallows, nods. Holds in another tremble. 

Steve holds Sam like he’s something that could break if he presses too hard. It undoes Sam sometimes, undoes him right now, pinned under the weight of a bright blue stare and a mouth that holds back fury at the mottled, purpled skin Sam sports. 

“You can’t kill them,” Sam says, just to watch Steve’s mouth twitch, a smile for all intents and purposes. A promise.

“Says who,” is all Steve says back, all the warning Sam gets before Steve lifts up, face close enough that Sam can feel the warmth of his breath, the tickle of the strands of hair that fall into his eyes. Steve wraps Sam’s ribs, body heat almost as numbing as the hot bath from this morning. 

“Says me,” Sam tells him, once he can breathe again. “I don’t know that I could break you out as easily as you did for me.”

Steve runs his hand down the gauze, like he’s checking to make sure it’ll hold. “You could,” he says surely. “I trust you, you know.”

“Be still, my beating heart,” Sam tells him. “Help me up, man. I think we got sightseeing and yelling to do.”

\-----

Steve got them a safehouse on a tulip farm. 

They have to drive to get a look at the whole property, this rickety old pick-up truck that sits at the edge of the driveway. There’s tulips blooming in every direction, in every color. Bright pinks and yellows and oranges and creams. The smell is strong, drafting through the open windows, clinging to Sam like an oversweet perfume. 

“Where’d you find this?” Sam asks, when Steve finally pulls to a stop and leads them out on a path into the heart of the fields. 

Steve helps Sam out the truck, which is only a little galling, only makes Sam want to kill him a little bit. “Somebody owed me a favor,” Steve says. “Figured it was time to cash it in.”

“Somebody who owns a tulip farm owed you a favor,” Sam repeats. “Bullshit. Who was it, Old McDonald?”

“Ee eye, ee eye oh,” Steve replies absently, sticking his face close into a cluster of tulips before plucking one out the bunch. He turns around, holds it out. His cheeks are red under the heat of the sun. “For you.”

It’s pink, so vivid and pigmented that it’s more fuchsia than anything. Steve reaches out and tucks the stem behind Sam’s ear, and the petals tickle his skin. They’re standing in the middle of a tulip farm in the middle of fucking nowhere. Sam has a tulip tucked behind his ear. Steve stands in front of him. He’s changed into low-hanging sweats and a ratty long-sleeved t-shirt from Sam’s alma mater. His knit cap comes down over his ears, because he fell into freezing fucking water decades ago and hasn’t been able to get warm since, and he looks like any other guy Sam would have hit on back in the day. 

They have left bodies in their wake. Strangers and teammates alike. There is a ghost with memories from a Brooklyn-past that will always own part of Steve, always whisper to him in dreams, always hold his attention. There will always be a mission, and Steve Rogers will always want to be the hero. Steve Rogers will always _be_ the hero.

“I love you,” Steve says, tilting his head like he can hear everything Sam won’t say. “You know that, right?”

Somehow, Jesus fucking Christ, somehow Sam knows that.

\-----

Sam postpones the yelling. He’s gonna come back to it though, most definitely.

\-----

Steve holds Sam down in the bed. His wrists, still bruised, still tender, are up by his head, out of the way. Steve presses down, and Sam stammers out a gasp, straining under the weight to move. Steve’s hungry, greedy with it, the way he presses his mouth to Sam’s chest, his stomach, careful of the gauze around his ribs, filling himself up on all the sounds he can get Sam to make.

“I love you,” he murmurs into the soft skin of Sam’s thigh, pushes so Sam’s knee is bent and licks and Sam fucking _arches_. “I watched you run for weeks around the Mall,” he whispers. “And I knew then,” he looks up from in between Sam’s legs, and ain’t that the greatest sight Sam has ever seen. Steve Rogers, his pouty, pink mouth, wet and bitten, gazing up like Sam made the moon and hung it up in the sky, too. “I swear I knew even back then, Sam.”

Steve’s fingers curl on his chest, right over where Sam’s heart is. Like he’s feeling for the beat of blood, feels the ache in Sam’s chest from the failures from the last few days, the small victories they stole where they could. Like Steve can feel the weight of Wanda and Rhodes and Tony and Bucky and Natasha, the weight of them all pressing down on Sam until he can’t breathe.

Maybe Steve can feel that, too. 

Sam shakes under Steve’s mouth, the velvet smooth of his tongue wrapped around Sam’s dick. He gives teasing licks to the head, hides a smile when Sam says _please, please, fucking please_ and lowers down, takes it all. He swallows around Sam’s dick, and Sam feels dizzy with it. 

Steve does it again, again, says, “Fuck my mouth, that all you got,” and Sam trembles through it, blinks away tears from the too-much of it all. 

“Jesus,” Sam moans, and he knows, before Steve pulls back, mouth spit-shiny and voice fucking wrecked, that Steve will say, “Nah, just me,” and Sam will fall apart.

Laughing, breathless, body sore and spent, thighs shaking. Steve says, “God, come already, we ain’t got all day,” and he holds Sam down, and Sam falls apart and Steve is there, Steve is always there.

“Fucking hell,” Sam whispers. His chest is heaving, little tremors going through him with the torturous touches Steve leaves on him, even after his orgasm fades out to buzzed bliss. 

“I love you,” Steve says. “You really know that right? It was never--even with all the shit, even with Bucky. I loved you. I love you.”

Sam runs his hand through Steve’s hair. It’s greasy and thick, slides through his fingers so damn easy. “I know, man.” He closes his eyes, and bodies flash behind dark eyelids, nightmare fuel even while he’s still awake. He tethers himself to Steve. “When you leave here, I’m coming with you. You know _that_ right?”

Steve sighs. He buries his head against Sam’s stomach, shifts a little on the bed so Sam knows he’s still hard, aching for it. “I know. It killed me to leave you behind before.”

“So don’t do it again,” Sam tells him. “Because for the record, I’m too high maintenance for prison. I like being your partner much more.”

Steve nods. “Partners.” He shifts again, lets a kiss linger on Sam’s hipbone. “Now--”

“Now,” Sam cuts in. “You’re going to make me some better eggs. Did you even try this morning?”

Steve’s mouth drops open. 

“No pepper, Steve,” Sam says. “Not even salt. Some cheese?”

Steve laughs, and Sam shoves him off. He feels debauched, hollowed out. Like Steve reached into the darkest parts of him and held on. 

“I love you,” Steve says. “I’ll make you better eggs.”

Sam grins. “Then I’ll let you come.”

“Then you’ll let me come,” Steve repeats. He leans down to kiss Sam, and he smells like sweat and sex and fucking tulips. “Thank you.”

He walks out, and Sam watches him go, tanned skin rippling over his muscles. Sam closes his eyes. He hears the sounds of Steve padding around in the kitchen, the distant sound of creaking in this old, worn-in farmhouse. 

His body hurts, his heart hurts. He misses his family, his mom and his sisters. He misses the family he started to build with the Avengers. He misses his fucking wings. He misses his normal life, when all he had to worry about was holding some battered, broken veterans together. Holding his battered, broken self together. 

Steve calls out, “You coming?” and his voice is teasing, but Sam hears something else, something deeper. Like he knows they can only have this for a little while. Until they have the next fight, the next mission, the next moment to save someone.

Sam says, “Yeah, I’m coming.”

Yeah, he’s coming.

\-----


End file.
